*** News - The 2017 edition of the Session Tunebook was released on 31 August 2017.
Now 600 tunes, still free to download, but only £8.00 (+p&p) to buy printed and bound from Lulu!

Paul Hardy's tunebooks contain tunes that I have learned (or am still learning!) to play on my English concertina.
They should also be playable on other folk melody instruments such as fiddle,
whistle, flute, mandolin or dulcimer.
I have included guitar chords,
sometimes based on computer generated ones - so use these as guidance, not definitive!
I have tried to present simple versions of most tunes, without much decoration and interpretation,
so add your own triplets, grace notes and variations.

Most are traditional tunes from the British Isles, including many English, Irish, and
Scottish dance tunes, but others are an eclectic mix of session favourites.
Some have been adapted from Internet resources, in abc, midi or visual score formats.
Others have been learned by ear or handouts from various sessions in the UK and US.
All are believed free of current copyright (unless noted explicitly), or else appear to have been
placed in the public domain as part of the ongoing live folk music tradition. Please let me know
if you are the owner of any that are under access restrictions and I'll remove them.

Paul Hardy's tunebooks are all Copyright Paul Hardy, 2004-2017, and are licensed under a Creative Commons
"Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike" cc by-nc-sa licence, which lets you use them pretty freely as
long as you acknowledge origin. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.
Contact Paul Hardy for commercial licensing terms.

The tunebooks are all available as PDF files for free download. You you can print these yourself, or load onto a tablet (e.g. iPad) to view and play from.
There is also a link to buying a printed and bound copy of the main session or Xmas tunebooks.
I also provide the machine-readable ABC files of the tunes that can be read by music software.
If you just want to hear the tunes played to you, then I have a playing ABC page
that says how to use free software to play these ABC files.

Donation?

If you find these downloadable resources useful, you may wish to make a donation (using Paypal or credit card) to help cover the costs of building and maintaining the tunebooks and the website that makes them available for free.

This tunebook contains some 600 tunes that I have learned to play on my English concertina,
that are played at local folk music sessions, particularly in the areas around Cambridge, England,
and Redlands, California where I have lived, plus ones prevalent at concertina events I attend.

This contains tunes waiting to be incorporated into Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook at the next major edition.
It also contains a table of errata to the main tunebook - mainly chord improvements.
The new tunes are available in several forms:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file with several tunes per page - this is probably what you want if you have a good printer yourself, or if you want to display it on a tablet computer.

Annex 2012 - a PDF file to update the 2012 edition of the Session tunebook to the 2013 edition.

Annex 2013 - a PDF file to update the 2013 edition of the Session tunebook to the 2014 edition.

Annex 2014 - a PDF file to update the 2014 edition of the Session tunebook to the 2015 edition.

Annex 2015 - a PDF file to update the 2015 edition of the Session tunebook to the 2016 edition.

Annex 2016 - a PDF file to update the 2016 edition of the Session tunebook to the 2017 edition.

Note: The 2016 edition of Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook had many chord improvements over the 2015 edition, but not all the later ones are described in the Annex 2015.
There were further chord tidies in 2017. So if you play a chord instrument, and have a 2015 book or earlier,it's well worth getting a 2017 book.

This contains a subset of the simpler and more common tunes from Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook. The 2017 edition is page compatible with the 2016 edition, and has very few minor updates. The 2016 edition had new tunes and tidies, and many chord improvements over the 2012 edition (with thanks to the Brind family).

William Clarke of Feltwell was an East Anglian country musician of the 1820s-1850s, probably superintendent registrar of the workhouse at Thetford in Norfolk.
The manuscript of his personal tunebook came into the possession of Lyn and Peter Law of Chester several years ago.
The contents have been transcribed into abc format by Mary Humphreys, Lyn Law, David Dolby, and Anahata. The master version is available for download at Mary's website - see http://www.maryhumphreys.co.uk/William_Clarke.php. Go to that if you want the authentic historical transcription.
This version of October 2011 by Paul Hardy includes many tidies and 'corrections' for modern playability.
The tunes are available as:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file with several tunes per page - this is probably what you want if you have a good printer yourself, or if you want to display it on a tablet computer.

I also have a private area which is password protected, in which I store work in progress and private material.
The Parts Private Tunebook and the Solo Tunebook which were here, have moved to the private area.

The tunebooks have been prepared using the abcm2ps software, with help from abc2midi, abcmus, Melody Assistant,
ABCexplorer, and EasyABC. A big thank you goes to those creative and dedicated people who give their time to
create and maintain low-cost or free and open source software for abc music editing and output.
The mechanism I use is described further in my tunebook processs page.

Thanks also go to Greenshoots (www.greenshootsmusic.org.uk) for the slow sessions near
Cambridge in England that let me learn many of these tunes; the Chiltinas concertina group near Bedford in England, and the WCCP Kilve concertina weekends in Somerset
that gave me playing confidence and concertina technique; the Ceili House Band in Redlands in California that
opened my eyes and ears to the range of Irish music; to the Celtic jam sessions at Green Valley Lake in
the nearby San Bernadino Mountains that broadened my repertoire; and the Ceol Galore young
musician practice sessions in my home village of Comberton that have carried traditional music forward
to the next generation.